The five-year (2006–2010) legal immigration rate per country's total 2005 population, defined as all those who received legal permanent residence in all categories, including regular immigrants, refugees and asylees, diversity lottery winners, NACARA/HRIFA beneficiaries, and others.
The Diversity Immigrant Visa program,
also known as the green card lottery, is a United States congressionally
mandated lottery program for receiving a United
States Permanent Resident Card. The Immigration Act of
1990 established the current and permanent Diversity Visa (DV)
program.
The lottery is administered by
the Department of State and
conducted under the Immigration
and Nationality Act (INA) as amended by the Immigration Act of
1990. The lottery makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas
annually and aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States,
by selecting applicants from countries with low rates of immigration in the
five years prior. As of 2017, around 20 million people apply for the lottery
each year, and around 100,000 people (including family members of the winners)
receive permanent residence as a result of it. Numerous fraudulent schemes
purport to increase the likelihood of winning in the lottery, but in fact the
only way to apply and win is to enter one's data into the State Department's
website, free of charge.
Attempts have been made to end the
program since 2005. In 2017, it received widespread attention after eight
people were killed in a terrorist
attack by a recipient of a Diversity Immigrant Visa.
History
Legislative and administrative history
Starting in 1986, the United States
established several temporary immigrant visa programs outside of the usual
immigration preferences (family members or by employment). The first program
was NP-5, run from 1987 to 1989, where a limited number of visas was issued on
a first-come, first-served basis. The second program was OP-1, run through a
lottery from 1989 to 1991 and available for natives of countries with low
levels of recent immigration to the United States. The third program, AA-1, ran
from 1992 to 1994 and was available for natives from a select group of
countries that had been "adversely affected" by earlier immigration
laws. Intentionally and in practice, people from Ireland and Northern Ireland benefited
disproportionally from these programs. They were also known as the Donnelly, Berman and Morrison visas, respectively, after the
congressmen who sponsored each one.[1][2][3][4]
The Immigration Act of
1990 established the current and permanent Diversity Visa (DV)
program, where 55,000 immigrant visas (later reduced to 50,000) are available
in an annual lottery. The lottery aims to diversify the immigrant population in
the United States, by selecting applicants mostly from countries with low rates
of immigration to the United States in the previous five years.[4]Starting in fiscal year 1999, 5,000
of the visas from the DV program are reserved for use by the NACARA program, so the number of
immigrant visas available in the lottery is reduced to 50,000.[5]
The first DV lottery, for fiscal year
1995, was named DV-1.[6] For fiscal years 1996 to 1999,
the name was in the format DV-YY, where YY was the last two digits of the year.[7][8][9][10] The lotteries since fiscal
year 2000 have been named in the format DV-YYYY, with the full year number.[11] The year in the name refers to
the fiscal year when the immigrant visas will be given, which starts in October
of the previous calendar year, and the entry period for the lottery occurs
almost a year earlier. Therefore, there is a two-year difference between the
lottery name and its entry period. For example, for DV-2017 (fiscal year
starting in October 2016), the entry period was in 2015.[12]
Initially, the DV lottery was
administered entirely by mail, and only winners were notified. The entry form
moved to an online system starting in DV-2005, but still only winners were
notified, by mail.[1] Starting in DV-2010, all
applicants are able to verify online whether they were selected.[13] Notification of winners also
by mail continued until DV-2011, but since DV-2012 it is done exclusively
online.[14]
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